We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Blog Administration

RSS Readers

Saturday, December 8. 2012

Since when does the federal government control school lunches? When I was a kid, my Mom made my lunch and I carried it in a lunchbox. Mom controlled it. Apple, banana, or plum, a sandwich on white bread, a couple of cookies. Usually baloney sandwich, Fluffernutter, or PB&J as I recall but sometimes ham and swiss as a luxury. With four of us kids, it was the early morning lunch-box assembly line. School provided only those little cold cartons of milk, chocolate or plain, with a straw. I turned out just fine.

And since when does the federal government control school curricula? Catcher is a dumb book and not worth the read, but who decides these things?

Since when do the feds have anything at all to do with local education anyway?

My goal is to round up hundreds of bloggers to make Howard Zinn's dreadful The People's History of the United States such a laughingstock that no school board would allow it to be assigned.

It is apparently the most popular book assigned in high schools and colleges. If anyone wonders why kids assume that we committed genocide on American Indians, were solely responsible for slavery in the world,— well, you know the litany.

We complain a lot about the schools. Surely we can make it embarrassing to have read it and believed that it was accurate history.

While nutritionists and some parents have praised the new school lunch standards, others, including many conservative lawmakers, refer to them as government overreach. Yet many of those same lawmakers also have complained about hearing from constituents who say their kids are hungry at school.
The reporter is trying to point out an irony here but it just showcases her ingrained bias. Uh, that should be in-whole-grain bias.

We are a nation of whores. The Feds take our money then use it to buy the right to dictate lunches and curriculum. Do as they say or no Federal cash. Then the school board has to justify to the screaming parents why they let government money pass their schools by. Freedom means saying "no" when they offer you money.

For some level we allow income taxes to be redistributed to government purposes. Schools are supposed to be locally controlled and funded.

Wisconsin has 'income equalization' where income taxes are used to subsidize poor communities. This gives the state too much control. Same thing here with the Feds. They reward states who kow-tow to Federal standards.

"C3" is the new core-curicculum the O Zone slipped into us turkeys right around Thanksgiving. Center City Coordination project, piloted since 2003 somewhere, maybe Minsk or Caracas, and activated nationwide just in November.

"Working Together for a Greater Community" is the slogan. Not long ago, this phrase would've hugely offended the left. Not no more, Comrades!

BTW, what comes after C3 is C4, but not, you know, around the kids.

(PS, that was a joke, Mr Drone Operater)

But they have a point, we can't be teaching the founderz wuz finks in some of the schools all the time and all of the schools some of the time, to train the brain it must be all the time all the uh, where.

Even putting aside the fact that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to dabble in K-12 education, no one can agree on what, exactly, is a healthy diet for everyone or even what foods are harmful for everyone. When you exclude those people who have a disease or allergy who require specific diets the majority can pretty much eat what they want without any effect on their health. Most of what we think we know about diet and specific foods is nothing more then bias. Misinformation is everywhere and every other site on health borders on unadulterated quackery in their advice. Even nutritionists and dieticians disagree and are often misinformed because the colleges and textbooks are little better then the quack websites. The school lunches are becoming more and more unappealing with the result that more and more food is being thrown out. The children are sufferring through meals that could have been created by a masochist which will result in no measurable health benefit.

My daugther is in her last year of high school and I've been noticing her making a lunch for school nearly every day, something she didn't do before this year. I asked her last week and she said the school lunches have gotten so bad and they have eliminated most of the choices they use to have so more kids have thrown in the towel and are just bringing something. They might not offer what she wants, but they can't make her eat it. Score: good parenting 1, public school propaganda 0.

Since when do the feds have anything at all to do with local education anyway?

Since they started paying for it. Why do you think we have a Department of Education that takes tax money, slices some off to support a bureaucracy, and then sends it back to the states? So that they can tell us what to teach our children - making sure that we teach them the right things, since we are obviously not as smart as they are and can't be trusted to figure these things out ourselves.

The Department of Education has never educated anyone. It was created by a Democrat president as a gift to the teachers union. It has since been used to sprinkle "free stuff" on friends of teachers unions. If it was eliminated tomorrow the countries education system would not suffer one iota and could actually be better off.

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: